Professional opinion:

In Kono Te, Nanmoku (How Large is this Play?), Ishida Yoshio shows this diagram.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Big play
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X . . |
$$ | . . O , . . . . . , . . . . . , X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

While pros do play the approach to the bottom left corner, as well as , Ishida says that is a top class big play (Ohba).

OC, it aims to invade on the right side, but he still calls it big rather than urgent.

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The way people use the proverb, I get the impression that urgent usually refers to sente or reverse sente moves, whereas big usually refers to gote moves. To say that urgent moves and big moves are the same is like saying sente and gote are the same, which is a deep, global perspective.

More seriously, I think that urgent is used when the 2nd best move (or area to to move) is significantly worse than the best move (or area to move), so that the loss if you miss it is significant to the game result. If you have an even number of moves all over the board that are all very close to the same size as far as you can judge, it is hard to say one is urgent. This is one reason it is harder to find urgent moves than big moves---to know where the urgent move is, you have to know where all the big moves, are, too

I like this explanation. I wonder, can flow or rhythm be thought about as the way the status of groups evolve over the course of the game? An urgent move being one that not only affects the current status of one group or more, but because of the relationships between groups, determines how those groups will evolve for many moves to come.

You get the basic idea right; it agrees to my book definition of urgent: "A move is urgent if it greatly contributes to making a group more stable." Stable is defined here:
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/Joseki_2_Sample.pdf
Citing p. 99 for the implied cases when moves can be urgent,
"
- An important group's status changes from unsettled to alive.
- A local sente move at a boundary is played or prevented.
- A major cutting point of a live group is eliminated.
- A player's additional major development direction is taken or prevented.
"

Such an urgent move tends to be bigger than a "big move" of a kind like an extension from a corner enclosure because the local per move value tends to be greater; turning the side extension moyo into territory requires a few moves rather than just the one extension move. Contrarily, an urgent move achieves its aim typically immediately, like a proper move does.



Wrong. Rather urgent is now bigger (as a per move value) than a typical big move is big now.



Ishida was right in the context of my definition above.

I always thought urgent had a defensive feel. Where as big is more offensive - a territory grab.

So, if you need to do something defensive, do it. If you don't have a need to support an existing group, go for the largest expansion you can.

Urgent before big.

While urgent plays are big in a sense, big plays are not necessarily urgent. I think Araban said it best:

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No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

No, urgent is bigger than big right now. Big is merely big now, but still smaller than urgent. See Araban's post.
All these relative terms are for moves right now; anything that is urgent/big later is by definition not urgent/big now.

Ed, I think Joaz may have meant something different than what you thought he did. I think his point is that while a big move shows its value immediately, by sketching out potential territory, you may not see the consequences of omitting an urgent move until several moves later, when your weak group is being harassed.

It has its value right now, because you play it right now, and that's how we define the value of a move, but the consequences that make its value explicit and readily apparent come later.

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Thanks, Hyperpape

Perhaps I should have said "big is countable now, urgent is countable later."

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Then don't use words you can't explain to yourself! Speak about stability instead.

I think this is on the right track but does not go quite far enough. IMHO, big and urgent are just ordinary words. As such, they provide mental traps for Go players. There is no such abstract dichotomy between "big" and "urgent" plays on the Go board. We may choose to create one in our heads and thereby confuse ourselves but other people may not. Specifically I do not think that pros use such terms in assessing the board. Instead they count. Of course their counting encompasses both the static and dynamic aspects of the game and will naturally consider and reject various alternative ways the game will develop before choosing the most likely. The title of the book by Ishida, which Bill excerpts above, is a true look at the professional heart - "Kono Te Nanmoku". Ishida may resort to using oba and kyusho in explaining the example to the target audience of amateur Go fans, but I am certain that he simply sees that move A changes the game situation more in his favor than move B based on his reading of the future development of the game.

So in fact big and urgent are the same - pablum for the masses!

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Urgent: If you don't play this move, you will most likely lose the game.
Big: You stand to gain a lot of points.

Which looks bigger?

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You have almost completely summed up my current opinion, and did so far better than I could have done, and with more credibility - thanks!

I think your conclusion means that big and urgent are the same for those of us who can accurately calculate the value of moves (all pros, raise your hands). For the rest of us however, to take a "big" point and allow a group to be trashed elsewhere is often a game losing decision. Sure, this isn't always the case, but I think that the terms are there to help us (amateurs) get a handle on a situation. Having two words (big and urgent) instead of one (best) helps us to understand and evaluate a position.

My point is that in the long run, it may only be important to make the moves that win and don't lose the game, but many roads lead to Rome, and there are a few that don't. Therefore, it is not invaluable to have some road signs. By differentiating between big and urgent, we can better discern which path we're on.

For me personally, "trashed" is the end of my evaluation, and when I read that far, my answer is invariably "prevent it." (Yes, it's usually me about to get trashed). While this is perhaps short-sighted and may in fact contribute to losing games, it represents the current end of my decision branch. This is probably a case of blindly following a proverb (insofar as I even recognize that a group could potentially become unstable). However, allowing it to happen or not does make for different games, and as such legitimizes a distinction between the words.

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The proverb is originally Japanese, but the discussion here is clearly based on a non-Japanese approach.

There's nothing inherently wrong in that, but if you accept as a separate topic for discussion the question why westerners have failed for so long and so often to make much of a dent in the world ratings, it's worth considering whether the western approach is wrong. What I see here is excessive concern with numbers and with making things static so that they be turned into lists and numbers and be counted. In practice, that translates into excessive interest in good shape, josekis, tewari, endgame plays and counting. These are all valid elements in go, and are of concern to Japanese players. But the mix in the Japanese approach seems completely different to me. They emphasise the dynamic more. I've banged on about this many times before. E.g. katachi (good shape) is dynamic because katachi + suji = haengma, and also the fact that we tend to ignore too much concepts like choshi.

Now it just so happens that earlier this week the Japanese press has been discussing their renewable energy problem. Since their prime minister Kan Naoto is a go nut, it's no surprise that some of the discussion has been framed around the go proverb "urgent points before big points" - except, of course that it hasn't.

It has been framed around the phrase 大場より急場. The tenor of the discussion has been about whether to continue hobbling Japanese energy companies by insisting that they buy a big proportion of their energy from renewable sources (solar, wind energy) or to give them free(er) rein to buy in any sort of power urgently. The urgency of course comes from the shortfall in domestic energy after the Fukushima nuclear calamity.

The discussion there makes the point that the 大場 (the green policies) are about the future. The 急場 is about providing energy NOW. In other words it is not a question of size (something static). It is a question of timing (something dynamic).

It just so happens that 大場 does not have to be translated as "big point". In fact it probably shouldn't be. 大 means "important" as well as "big". The Chinese have imported the Japanese term, but one definition in a Chinese book does not mention size at all. It says "strategically important" point. An alternative, native term in Chinese, 大意, reinforces this point, referring as it does to points of "great significance".

The "future" aspect of 大場 is also brought more into focus if you recall that the term is almost entirely a fuseki term. In other words, it relates to the part of the game where you are mapping out the future. Of course, you can easily find examples in Japanese texts where "bigness" seems part of the context, but the beauty of the Japanese synthetic approach is that it can absorb all these nuances. The western analytic approach instead wants to isolate it all to a single definition or list. It's a thing of the past now, but someone once made a nice distinction: westerners want to pack everything neatly into a suitcase, and if things don't fit you leave them out (and lose the benefit) or you do violence to the suitcase (and maybe lose the suitcase); the Japanese used to use a furoshiki cloth and tie everything up into a bumpy bulging but bumper bundle.

It is therefore possible to conclude that "urgent points before big points" is not a Japanese proverb at all, but a bastardised western one, and one that just happens (in my view) to symbolise much that is wrong with the western approach to go.

If we want to reflect the Japanese meaning, we need to rephrase the proverb. "Urgent points before speculative points that may or may not be important in the future" is a little de trop. Maybe we should just start saying "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".

If, being a westerner, you really can't get away from size one way or another, try changing it into money terms. It's pointless making an investment for the future if you don't pay your bills now and end up paying more interest on them than you gain for your shares.

Yes, yes, to forestall the tiresome forum policemen: the distinction westerners/Japanese is simplistic and not all westerners think the same, numbers are occasionally useful, yadda yadda yadda. But this is a discussion group and the idea of a difference seems worth discussing. You do in any case have to explain the different interpretations of the proverb in L19 this week and the Japanese press this week.

John, I think you have hit the nail on the head. But is it exactly the way you intended? Yes, a group of politicians with an agenda have framed a discussion in terms of the abstract expression 大場より急場. The demonstration of how abstract these terms are is shown that they apply equally "well" to plays on a Go board and wind farms. Since the expression is normative, as long as the politicians are careful to correctly assign 大場 to those things they do not wish to do and 急場 to those that they do, the frame is perfectly aligned with their agenda. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Western versus Eastern thinking. The Times in the U.K. or the Washington Post in th U.S. will provide an endless supply of similar cases every day. Only the base language will be different (Uh, that is the base language of the Times versus that of the Washington Post of course ).

Like any other heuristic (e.g. tewari ). The expression has some value in decision making. Again, like any other heuristic however, it can be wrong or even abused. In this case there is the particular problem that "big"/"important" are not necessarily directly comparable to "urgent". This means that making either/or decisions based on them can be a chancy business, while trying to refine our understanding of what they mean can be extremely frustrating.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Which is what I think Joaz was trying to say with:




I like it.

I kind of like it, but it seems possible that people could interpret this as saying, "This big move is not urgent, and give me lots of points, so I'll play it. It'll be points in my hand.".

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From http://senseis.xmp.net/?KyubaBeforeOba:

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You miss the dynamic aspect in Western definitions as much as Westerners missed the dynamic aspect in Eastern terms when their translation lost the dynamic context. The Western definitions, with or without referring to current numbers, can be applied dynamically because they should be reapplied after every move of the game and every move of every variation. So of course the Westerns approach is not wrong - rather it fills a huge gap left by the Eastern approach as little as is seen of it here due to the very tight translation bottleneck.